To raise awareness on the issue of unaffordability of tuition fees, the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) and the Carleton Academic Student Government (CASG) partnered to host a debate held in the University Centre Atrium.
Moderated by CASG and CUSA council chair Shawn Humphrey, the debate—held Nov. 23—posed the question whether or not post-secondary tuition fees should be free for all students.
Three students and one Carleton professor debated the issue: Carleton Conservatives’ president Kieran Moloney, Carleton New Democrats co-chair Abel Mengistab, vice-president (federal policy) of the Carleton Young Liberals, and Carleton business professor Ian Lee.
Aiden Forsyth, CASG vice-president (operations), told the Charlatan the event is an important step towards allowing student voices to be heard by the student groups that represent them.
“We want to hold events like this because we want to help the community of Carleton on discussing issues like these,” Forsyth said.
“It was a natural collaboration because CUSA has resources and a reach with students we might not have, and we have a specific base of academic issues we cover at CASG.”
CUSA president David Oladejo said the debate worked great with their programming for financial literacy month—a month-long awareness initiative that took place this past November.
“I always think it’s great when student groups come together on issues like these, and this was no exception,” Oladejo said.
At the debate, speakers were allowed three minutes for opening statements, following which they were given a minute each to freely debate a list of prepared questions.
Questions were asked on topics including qualifiers for getting free tuition, the benefits or losses of a no-cost system, and the amount of people graduating successfully if tuition was made free for students.
“I think we’ve picked a very good range of questions,” Humphrey said. “I do have my gavel here if things get wild.”
Kicking the debate off, Lee began by saying he doesn’t support free tuition unless it is for people with lower incomes.
“We should support targeted social policy. I think one of the worst things in the world we’ve done is universal social policy—for example: universal healthcare, which allows wealthy, upper-class people to get free drugs, which I think is shameful,” he said.
“I know you feel poor as a church mouse right now, but let me tell you, the statistics are very clear,” he said. “You will be making the bigger bucks soon.”
Moloney, president of the Carleton Conservatives, said he doesn’t support free tuition either, adding he’d first like to clarify what that means on a broader scale.
“Free tuition would be all of us standing in the parking lot with a professor like Dr. Lee here to benevolent onlookers, and I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here today,” he said.
“Whether it be vocational in nature or whether we’re pursuing post-secondary education because we want to obtain a better jobs, we’re pursuing a degree because we see some merit to it—and we should be contributing something to it.”
According to Carleton’s 2018-19 budget, the university’s operating income of $505 million is composed of 61 per cent tuition fees from students, 34 per cent government grants (federal and provincial), three per cent miscellaneous fees and income, and two per cent investment income.
Moloney said the argument for free tuition from the would mean the provinces over doubling their financial commitment to universities.
“The idea of advocating for single-payer, universal free tuition is ludicrous, it is not financially sustainable and it’s not in the interest of any of us,” he added, “how will that be financed?”
But, Mengistab, a public affairs and policy management student at Carleton, said he favours free tuition.
“Free tuition is what we’re chatting about today, but it’s about something much bigger than that,” Mengistab said, “this is a fundamental question about whether we can take the most ambitious step in a generation to ensure our students can thrive in a knowledge-based economy and about what we’re willing to do to increase quality of life for everyone and how much we truly value learning.”
Mengistab said the idea of free tuition for students raises two questions.
“Do we want the next generation of students to have the resources they need to receive a high quality education as right, and how badly do we want that?” he said.
Kenney said he agreed with Mengistab.
“I think it’s important to understand this debate is about education,” he said, “it’s not about education because university’s not about education.”
“In the 21st century, university is a simple, efficient and brutal system of separating the rich from the poor. It is a filter that separates the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots,’” he added.
Kenney said if students lived in the world his opponents in the debate were painting, it would mean they would end up remaining poor if they were born poor.
“When you give someone the tools they need to be the most productive, most creative, the most free-thinking individual they can be, they become more valuable to society,” he said.
“The truth that there is someone out there who is a scientist who could cure cancer, but he’s flipping burgers right now because he’s flipping burgers right now. That’s a travesty and we need to avoid it.”
Throughout the open rounds of debate, Kenney and Mengistab said they believe their opponents are not providing real solutions to the issue of increases tuition fees for students because they are blocking people from going to university.
But, Lee said he disagreed.
“I am not arguing that there shouldn’t be free tuition for low-income people, I strongly support free tuition for low-income people,” he said, “I just don’t support the wealthy people or the upper-class such as doctors, professors, or bankers. They don’t need help.”
Moloney said free tuition might cause the system to change in a way that is not suitable for learning environments in universities.
“When we talk about free tuition, I legitimately still don’t know what it means,” he said. “Does it mean that [Carleton] is free? Or do you model it after the Nordic and European countries who have introduced free tuition?”
He added that European post-secondary institutions that have introduced free tuition ordinarily “cut out all the fluff,” by cutting out sports, making lectures free to attend or not attend, and they don’t budget for newer buildings as a Canadian university does.
The debate ended with Humphrey asking students attending to ask panellists any questions they had during the course of the debate if they needed clarifications.
Oladejo and Forsyth said they are excited about future partnerships on issues such as these that affect students at Carleton.
“Panellists at the debate actually asked us if we did more of these, and we said we definitely will,” Forsyth said.
CASG plans to host another debate on a similar student issue earlier in the winter semester.
Photo by Karen-Luz Sison
